cute and sharp

I was looking around in the cobwebbed corners of my brain for something cute and intelligent to say here.

I didn't find much. That happens a lot.

I was thinking today about how inadequate my vocabulary is, about how no matter how hard I try and how educated I become, I don't seem to know as many words as I need/want/ought to know. I've always blamed that on Alabama. But it isn't just Alabama; it is that I never read the right stuff (books with "higher" vocabulary levels) until I was older and my core vocabulary was already set in stone. Not that you can't learn words when you're older, it is just that it is harder to maintain them when you don't use them often. My point? Sometimes I feel like an idiot when I have to go look up a word that I'm pretty sure a person with a Ph.D. in English should already know. But, I'm not alone. One of my colleagues asked me the other day what "prosody" is. Since I am into poetry, I know that one. I guess we all have our specializations.

Someone in my class today asked what "felicity" is. We started with "happiness" but then agreed that it was more than just happy, or having fun. Another student offered "fulfilled" as an addition to happiness. Not exactly, but closer. Yes, to be happy is one thing, but to be both happy and fulfilled is something quite different. After class, I looked it up: bliss...yes, that would have been the right thing to say. It didn't come to me during class though. That is always frustrating. However, in discussing the definition, I had a rare moment when the class said that there was a difference between pleasure and fulfillment. Oh yes, I said. Quite an important difference.

I wonder much these days about fulfillment. Bliss seems like a fantasy.

Words are cute and sharp little things, aren't they? I just don't know enough of them.